john: i'm john heilemann. mark: and i'm mark halperin. with all due respect to mike pence last night, you seem to for have gotten the main thing, to keep the main thing the main thing. >> this is the iran thing. this is the personal thing again? youwithout that mexican -- whipped out that mexican thing again. ♪ mark: if it's not one thing, it's another. mike pence feeling pretty good today. pence had a debate last night, good reviews from all corners. 36 million people watched pence beat kaine, the lowest ratings

since 2000. 50 million fewer eyeballs than paul ryan and joe biden. as far as style goes, mike pence's disciplined defense of donald trump and policies and criticism of hillary clinton and her policies had much the political world declaring, endlessly comes to debating skills. declaring, atorld least when it comes to debating skills, but donald trump was upstaged. himself was in a credit taking mood today in a nevada for putting mike pence on the ticket. mr. trump: how many of you watched the vice presidential debate last night? [applause] mike pence did an incredible job. and i'm getting a lot of credit because that is really my first

so-called choice. that was my first hire as we say in las vegas. [applause] and i will tell you the good one. he was phenomenal. he was cool and smart. just take a look at him. he was meant to be doing what he's doing, and we are very proud of governor mike pence. [applause] thank you mike pence. some speculation and reporting that donald trump did not like the notion that he would be called not as good as a debater as mike pence. how do you think trump seems to be reacting personally to penc s 's good reviews? john: there is that, but another elephant -- another element. the defense of trump's policies. pence did not really defend a lot of donald trump's policies. he did not weaken the middle of the night. today maybe he's protesting too much.

but at least as of now on the basis of what we have seen and anything that i personally know, i think that is been overblown. trump has taken offense -- over blowm that trump has taken offense. mark: if he needs to win the debate on sunday, and his campaign is in a tough place, one of the smartest things his staff has convinced him to do is to talk about this debate win as a win of ideas. lower taxes, smaller government, smarter foreign policy. is focused on that in reaction to mike pence, he's doing just fine. it seems to me that it is overblown. trump has not got the best poker face in the world. he seems pretty happy where pence left him. -- we known't that

that nominees don't like to be overshadowed by their understudies. we thought that john mccain was worried about sarah palin overshadowing him. but he looked at the crowds and said hey, this is actually helping me. i think donald trump realized that he was having a bad run, and other pressure is all on him to perform. there were a lot of foreign policy issues where mike pence effectively took exception to trump. the clinton campaign put out a long list where mike pence is in a different place. so it is not like he has adopted his policies. mark: but he has on lower taxes, change in washington, and critiquing hillary clinton. this is the best day they have had in a while. mike pence wasn't talking about the indian a miracle. he was talking about himself. think they are largely feeling good. john: whatever weirdness he

feels, he's holding it in check. the second presidential debates is this sunday in ye olde gateway to the west, the place of the fallen red birds happily denied a place to the playoffs against the mets -- yay. you're talking about st. louis. we have seen trump make some campaign advances to the trail. there are some tips to could take from mike pence's debate last night. pence often turn to the moderator's questions into opportunities to attack hillary clinton. he spoke directly to the camera. pence: you can roll out the sunnyside, but people in scranton, fort wayne know different. one of the last things he mentioned was border security. that's how washington always place it. i can make clear to the american

people after covering millions of miles as our secretary of state, after being architect of the foreign policy of this in ministration, america is less safe today than it was the day that barack obama became president. mark, that is a good debater skill. trump did not do it much in the first debate. trump could clearly learn from that. mark: amazing that tim kaine failed. john: utterly. mark: trying to fight with the moderator and mike pence. john: he did not know which camera to talk to. mark: make america great again, the democrats have turned that into a negative slogan. america is great now. donald trump sees it as an optimistic than. and despite some corners of the liberal media: mike pence as -- calling mike pence as dour, he has this reagan like optimism.

imagine him talking like this on sunday. >> we are going to have a stronger america. when you hear him say we want to make america great again, when we do that, i truly do believe the american people will be standing taller. they are going to see that real change can happen after decades of talking about it. when that happens the american people will stand tal, stand togethe; and will have the kind of unity that is been missing for wayy too long. mark: that is the kind of message that donald trump conduct. he was caught up in the negativity of hillary clinton. he could could a -- adapt. all of this saying that america is in a hell hole and that he needs to fix it, it's optimistic he wants to fix the country, but his the right now is pretty darn pessimistic.

another thing that mike pence did well is that he is folksy and plainspoken. we do think that trump could learn something from the colloquial way in which mike pence talks. i am a small town boy from a place not too different from farmville. by dropping acorn p -- innate -- i grew up in a cornfield. everythingdad built that matters in a small town in southern indiana. the build a family and a good name. john: a couple things about that, when is the colloquialism about it. the other is the biographical nature. talking in human relatable terms. i did not see much about that from donald trump on the first debate. mark: he likes fast food and was born in queens, but he will never be at the same level of mike pence as being a more ordinary person. donald trump's life has been

anything but ordinary. at the same time, he has yet to in a compelling way talk about people he has met on the campaign trail, a stable of running for president. trump cannot react to people that suggests he understands what their lives are like, he will be on the short end of that exchange. john: or talk about his family. he loves his kids, his grandkids. mark: but he said he could not talk about them for more than a minute. john: both of these candidates. hillary clinton has had this problem too. they need to talk about themselves in a more human way that people can relate to. mark: pence was a strong model. as we talked about mike pence and his strong performance, we talked about style. substance the governor of indiana, who likes to borrow reagan's idea of facts being stubborn things, had a few

problems. that the clinton foundation spends less than 1/10 of its divisions uncharitable causes. the more number is more like 90%. and that the clinton campaign is in favor of open borders. the media fact checkers jumped on the instances in which mike pence disputed tim kaine's characterizations of things that donald trump has said in the past. some of those assertions were things that donald trump has shifted on. others are about semantics. kaine himself was also sometimes not having anything but trouble with the truth. he said hillary clinton "worked a tough negotiation with nations around the world to eliminate the iranian nuclear program." of course john kerry negotiated the deal, and it has not eliminated iranian nuclear capabilities. pence stretched the truth by over his opponent by an anymore account. yet he was declared by me and others as the winner of the night.

is the media wrong to focus so much on style as opposed to talking about substance of what they said? john: there is a balance to be struck. anybody that does not think that style matters, that this is not a performance, is nuts. that is why they spent so much time working on it. mark: that is what being vice president is being about. john: 100%. i think it's important to talk about who won on style. on the other hand talking about what is accurate and not accurate. the fact checking cottage industry seems a bit of out-of-control. mark: everything is an opportunity to overstate the extent to which something was wrong or meaninglessly wrong. -- meaningfully wrong. john: but it is fair. it takes longer to go back given that you have 90 minutes of material to do the fact checking elements. case, this has

something that he has denied things that trump has said. the clinton campaign is capitalizing on it. we should focus on both. john: critics should not be so impatient. not just what was technically wrong, but what meaningful? not fact checking for the sake of saying "ha ha, you got this "here's whatbut you need to know, voting public." because mike pence was dealing with a lot of donald trump complexity, more things were that's less things were true then meaningfully true. it was a mismatch. john: there was a pretty big mismatch i think. also in the political bloodstream is that mike pence may have his eye on a white house bid in four years. that notion is that he may have been animating himself, distancing himself from donald

trump. the theory is that mike pence is 2020 pound seemed to become 20 a democratic talking point. >> mike pence seemed that he's going to play his own game. >> he had his own agenda tonight. to me it seemed like he was auditioning for 2020. >> don't vote for my guy, micah is going to be great. what we heard is, vote for me in 2020. >> he threw trump under the bus. this is about mike pence running the primaries in 2020. he had a strategy to promote himself at the expense of donald trump. pence 2020.k, the theory, do you buy it? mark: no. he is trying to get donald trump an insult elected to the white house. he understands that his role leaves him as strongly positioned as anybody to run in

2020. but the idea that he will throw donald trump under the bus, he did his best to defend trump. the fact that it's all smoke 2020, that is not a primary sense -- the fact that it sets him up for 2020, that is not a primary sense. john: mike pence has thought about running for president. he would like to run for president. if donald trump loses, mike pence will likely run for president. true that he did not defend don't jump and any aggressive shoulder to shoulder way that tim kaine did with hillary clinton. there is a reason for that. they disagree with a lot of things and trump said things that are hard to defend. it is too much to say that he had a strategy, he had a conspiracy where he was lying the whole time. he did not throw him under the bus. and he was not mainly guided by that. but all those other things archer.

true.ings are mark: and because he can see is helping the ticket. john: the broader republican tent. mark: we go back to the 1990's to talk about hillary clinton's latest big-name surrogate out on the trail right after this. ♪

john: hillary clinton's team is cleaning up a bit of a mess after her clinton -- after her husband criticized the affordable care act, calling it "the craziest thing in the world." now they plan to roll out former vice president albert gore, who is going to hit the trail in the coming weeks.

he's going to talk about global warming, as he often does, but talk about the warning of third-party spoilers. this was a centerpiece of 1990's politics. mark, my question for you, is hillary clinton courting trouble by getting this particular band back together> ? mark: i think if what bill said is the worst thing they have said, they will be lucky. they will put a system in place to keep the clinton from causing these problems. millennialsk many have heard of them, or just associate him with global warming. every vote count,s especially in florida. one candidate cares about climate change, which matters to millennials. gore may not do that directly, but there is a bank shot, but is he will get press coverage. that allows them to make the case in the media on the two

issues which are vitally important to her chances in florida. john: i don't see the downside in doing this. this is an all hands on deck moment for hillary clinton. she is ahead and would like to sew this thing up where she has a somewhat safe lead. no reason not to bring gore out. "an inconvenient truth" came out 9-10 years ago. although he cares a lot about climate change, he's not someone is going to rally millennials in a way that bernie sanders does. i see no real risk in that. bill clinton, this was just collateral damage. you have bill clinton on your side -- 90% of the times can be great, and 10% of the time he's going to call problems. mark: there may be bill and hillary psychodrama, there may be other psychodrama going on. they have been doing a great job keeping it under the surface. john: i like i like how you say

there may be psychodrama between those people. just that you're keeping it under wraps. coming up, strategist,s strategist, and more strategists. we will have more stringents -- more strategists then we what we know what to do. they will all be on our stage after this. ♪

mark: welcome back. upr next guests are riled fired up and ready to go. trump campaign senior advisor and them credit strategist liz smith. -- and democratic strategist liz smith. and the director of rapid response for president obama's.

-- president obama's reelection campaign. if you were looking for a data point that would suggest that donald trump is ready to have a stronger second debate, what would you point do? >> are you looking for a number? mark: just a fact. >> may watching mike pence and learning from him. i don't think that is one of donald trump's strong suits. but look, we were talking about this. he always had this reputation of being this blowdried good presentation on tv type of guy. and it came through last night. i think donald trump could learn from it. mark: what would you say? what is something that you have seen that makes you say, he needs to improve. >> first of all i think we are continuing the trajectory from last week. ead the continue to l

race continuing into st. louis. visiting at wes and starting in virginia with veterans was great. great features and great crowds. he is energized and ready to go. we are ready to talk about national security, the economy. i think the town hall format very much lens itself to donald trump. authentic, she is robotic. john: a monmouth poll puts trump ahead in ohio, and a reuters poll puts her up by six points nationally. every battleground state poll has shown her picking up speed. >> we are up in the l.a. times, we are up in the rasmussen. the last time they took that monmouth poll, we were down 4. that has trended toward hillary clinton. ll.k: big fan of the upi po

>> i did not know there was still a upi poll. [laughter] >> bulls are coming out now nationally driven by the media spin from the last debate. i am not concerned about that. john: or what some would call donald trump's poor performance in the first debate. >> i would say media psin because i thought it was a good performance. >> i call it a reenactment of the hindenburg. >> wow. mark: fair enough. i thought you would say it was as rehearsed and spontaneous as a tim kaine line. >> i don't have prepared zingers. how was tim kaine last night? how did that go? john: what did you think? you thought that mike pence did well. >> there are two metrics by which he is judged how people form indicates -- -- people

perform in debates. on style, mike pence was good and stayed calm throughout. in terms of substance i think tim kaine got the better of it. we are seeing it in the coverage. all the coverage was, mike pence won, but people are now focusing in on how mike pence would not defend donald trump's offensive comments. >> that is not substance. let's talk about substance. let's talk about iran. >> he would not defend the muslim ban. he would not defend the deportation path that donald trump laid out. >> on what topic do you think pence?as stronger than iran is a joke. kaine said that because of hillary clinton we no longer have nuclear weapons. we know that in that agreement there are loopholes for them to keep a medium -- to keep

uranium. we know that $1.7 billion have gone to iran. hillary clinton failed in iran, filled in russia, failed on libya, killed on everything she has done is secretary of state. >> let's talk about russia. >> $500,000 for a 90 minute speech in moscow. mark: standby. we are going to come back right after this. you will never guess who is going to join the conversation. stay tuned for that. back in a moment. ♪

john: we are back with boris and

liz. thank you for joining us. are vociferously anti-trump. anti-clinton. i hate everybody, this cycle. john: how do you think the presidential -- the vice presidential debate played out? >> it focused on the negatives of clinton and trump. of whatike a great deal was said was accurate and i came demoralized about the terrible choices the parties have put forward this cycle and i hope that people will investigate other options and

consider writing themselves in or somebody they like. or, just skipping the presidential and focusing down ballot. we had people acting the way we expected them to act in a debate, which was refreshing. >> tim kaine had a little too much red bull. some fireworks, but i was shocked by tim kaine. the king, you are at of interrupting everybody. you are like tim kaine here. >> here is what i was going to say before liz decided to jump back in. showed himself to be measured and ready to be

the next president. lines andhad canned did not seem to enjoy himself. >> that is ridiculous! mark: i want to start with liz and the other liz. what is your sense of the trajectory of sunday night for the rematch? >> i think there will be a drop off. look, i am not an expert. 65 million.70 or >> i have no particular views with ratings. i suspect we are going to see a debate between two people with unapproval rating.

itually, unlike donald trump, think it is important to note pence outlined a different policy. >> it is exactly the same. >> can you avoid interrupting people? every time you are on tv, this is all i see you do. interview, gary said he did not know any world leaders. are you comfortable with that position? >> it is not optimal. i will grant that. compared to clinton and trump, i will take that. at least it is not a guy who is naive.

gary johnson is, at least, somebody who understands that russia is not inclined to be our friends, no matter how much we kiss their butts. >> you couldn't be more wrong, liz. >> boris, you spend a lot of time on tv. it is hard to keep up with what your candidate says. your candidate spends more time kissing vladimir putin's butt. >> you just love saying, "butt." maybe that is why you are not on the campaign. >> i ran a super pac that did damage to your candidate. >> we won the primaries. mark: on a factual matter -- john: on a factual matter, i have read foreign-policy conservatives who said that

--ce's for policy is at foreign policy is at odds with trump. russia, syria, places where they have different visions. >> let's start with syria. donald trump and mike pence are specific about saison's for refugees. as far as the crisis of syria, donald trump amite tents have been saying we need to leave all the options on the table. mark: "let's syria and isis fight. why do we care?" >> when is that quote from? >> he says things like that. not: are you saying it is operative? quote wasying the

taken out of context and the campaign has been very consistent, like with what i just laid out with russia. mark: you have to stop. done.d we are outn isis, a policy he laid is that he was going to bomb i sis and that was his plan. >> how did hillary do with isis? how did she do with isis? you can thank hillary clinton. mark: we have the three musketeers here. john: there is so much love in this room. it is a huge lovefest. >> i don't do loving. i do hating. john: that is a perfect self-characterization. you said it. not us. you canre watching us,

also listen to us. we will be right back.

mark: welcome back. never-rphy, a staunch trumper. theried to get jeb! nomination. john: he fell a little short on that front. about trump.talk wit

down 5, nationally. they put on new ads. they have the debates coming up. what can they do to change the dynamic? >> they are in a sober and the good news is that the media attention has never been hotter. the clock is ticking bad. polling arethe interesting. stuck in a cul-de-sac, losing college-educated and minorities. there needs to be trump hammering on his "no more politicians" without tripping on his own shoelaces. mark: have you ever had a client

where you say, "you were inconsistent and i need you to focus." >> yes. who doork with people not have a disconnect from the campaign. eds to change up things and he will not use the media hammer to move his numbers. ads are not enough. he needs the earned media. we have not seen it. look, the world is different than it has been and there are not that many days left. wanted, isd what you their time to move the numbers? >> i think it is heavy baggage.

is toly shot they have change it up and put trump on a script that resonates with more people. that is all he has got. if he does not, it will fold in on him. if you look at the current polling, what is the path you would run? >> i would fix the big things to fix the little things. if you're not working rights, nationally, you will not work in ohio. he has to draw some of the states. colorado and virginia will be hard. he does the national stuff right, those things will get better. he could draw the inside straight. my sense is that the

clinton campaign has no path and she turns to senior staff and says, "i don't want to sit pat." >> trump has proven that the logo of his campaign should be his face with a fishhook. i would put in sold comments on comics onnd -- insult the road every day. i would help them have something to land. if she doubles down on elizabeth warren. could scare away some of the voters she could get away from trump. remember, they need a little

reassurance to land. they are not that comfortable with liberal democrats. forogates and landing pad fiscally conservative voters. john: the clinton campaign is worried about the millennial voters. they are underperforming with this group. should they be as worried about this as they are? >> no. september is about misleading polling data and october is doingthem a kratz democratic things and republicans doing republican thanks. doingabout democrats democratic things and republicans doing republican things. you have independence who are more fiscally conservative. mark: the losing side usually

"where is the ape?"end wright t donaldthey be egging trump on with that? >> the worst thing to do is to upset's about things that you cannot control. obsess about things you cannot control. do not waste time on fantasy stuff or crazies. get trump to act like the change candidate without risk. never tell a candidate a joke on debate a you do not want to hear. they will go for the joke. less clutter in his head.

more focus on change. "i will deliver the economy and eymonster."e boog john: bill clinton and al gore. what do you do about bill clinton and his propensity to do things that are problematic? >> i would park him in the metal-bending states. gore, they think he is a ticket to millennials. i would say they are not interested in "yesterday." i do not think he is a voter-mover. they have to have insult surrogates and send dog

to normalters republicans that it is ok to vote for hillary and you will not get a karl marx administration. mark: more, after this.

c roadshe is an nb warrior. joining us now is casey. we have been talking about the debate last night and sunday. the clinton campaign says, "we won the debate." do they believe that? >> i don't think it matters that

much, in the long run. they wanted tim kaine to defend did.nd they feel like sh he the style did not always work. there was no major gaffe problems. mark: are they as confident as the obama campaign? do they say, "the numbers are not there." ?" asthey are not as confident obama, but not unconfident. they feel the fundamentals are where they need to be for her to be in a strong place. things seem to be going well for her. they have some issues. 2012, it wasn

said, "here are the people who the romney campaign says are going to vote republican." that was not the case. that everybody agrees trump must win this debate or be doomed. going intol happy this town hall format? >> it is tricky and we have never seen a female candidate in format.d of a she has gotten a lot of practice in iowa. public week, they argue the format helps. he is not as used to it -- publicly, they argue that the format helps. he is not as used to it.

we never see him in these settings. away from podium, far the people he is interacting with. they will have to grapple with the semiotics. mark: she is still fundraising. speeches?ct policy >> it seems like it is debate prep and fundraising. coast planning a west swing. she is going to fund raise in the evenings and prep for the debates during the day. keep waitingike we for her to ramp up. it only seems like we are going to get three weeks. the: a wildcard variable is

getting intocs, each other's space. -- donald is a b trump is a big guy. how is the clinton campaign preparing? who talked to john podesta, eluded to them doing these things. i was watching her, staying seated. she has had a habit of walking around the stage. the event she had yesterday -- s are long.y i wonder if her staying seated

was practice. mark: do you see her performing well? >> i would say so. we did more even than we have to put the done in a campaign day and she did not make any mistakes, seeming to present strongly. back, donald come trump walks into a first grade classroom and will not believe what happened next. ♪

>> you are grade students. tudents. s >> boring. trump visiting

egas.-graders in va you can get more analysis of that visit, which was incredible. bloomberg west is up next. we will be back here tomorrow. john: i want to go to a christian academy. mark: there are some new things that donald trump has not done that normal candidates to. heools, factory tours, has done them a handful of times. we will be back here tomorrow. until then, sayonara.

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at least half a million people have been ordered to evacuate. the storm killed at least 11 people in the caribbean. is praising the climate change accord. >> if we follow through on the commitments that this paris agreement embodies, history may well judge it as a turning point for a planet. >> the accord takes effect in a month. russia has suspended an an agreement. russia calls the move a counter to u.s. sanctions. canceled anoscow agreement with washington on the disposal of weapons grade plutonium. the syrian government will reportedly